• Changes at the Thatcham Memorial Foundation

This charitable trust, founded in 1947, owns and manages several sites and buildings in the town including the Memorial Fields, the Scouts’ building, the Bowling Club, the Youth Hall and the car park near the Fields At its meeting in October 2025, several new trustees were appointed at the behest of residents who felt that the organisation needed to take a new direction to best deal with some of the challenges it was facing.

It seems there were, or are, three such issues.

One of these was a tangled and almost surreal tale of the path by the side of the hall, which we covered in this column a year or so ago. This was closed by Trust, even though it didn’t own it, on the grounds that it was dangerous. The fact that people thought the Trust owned the patch, and that it had for many years been behaving as if it did, might have left it open to damages claims if people fell and injured themselves (as at least two did). Meanwhile, it wasn’t immediately clear who the owners actually were.

All this procedural, regulatory, legal, moral and financial muddle has now been solved, Thatcham TC having identified the owners, bought the land and fixed the path.

There were also some unresolved lease issues with two of the organisations which had, it seems, been dragging on for some time and which needed to be resolved.

The big one in many ways was WBC’s multi-million pound plan for community hub, which would involve the demolition of the Thatcham TC offices and the current cricket pavilion and their replacement with purpose-built offices and other sporting facilities. The Memorial Foundation is heavily involved in this at it owns about 40% of the land for the proposed site.

This development also threatens a large part of its annual income as the ownerships and uses of the assets would change. Who would run these and what compensation the Trust would receive are just two of the issues that need to be addressed.

As with all such organisations, everything must be done in accordance with its governing document and any changes must be approved by the Charity Commission. In all probability, a referendum of local residents will need to take place. If in due course this needs to happen, it will be publicised here. It seems, though, that there are a lot of things that need to happen before that stage is reached.

• A consultation from the fire service

Royal Berkshire Fire Authority (RBFA) is consulting all Berkshire residents and staff on Council Tax funding for the next financial year until 9am on Monday, 2 February 2026.

“RBFA is committed to delivering value for money across the services provided to local residents,” the RBF explains. “However, due to significant budgetary pressure as outlined in this letter, to protect our services to the public, RBFA is proposing a £5 increase for 2026/2027, based on a Band D precept, to £91.31.

“This year the Government has announced a three-year settlement of central funding, instead of a one-year settlement. To align to this and help us plan our finances effectively over the longer term, RBFA is also consulting on an increase of £5 per annum in Council Tax, based on a Band D precept, for the next three years.”

For more information and to take part in the consultation, please click here.

• A look back at 2025

We’ve covered a large number of stories in this area over the last twelve months. See last week’s column (below) for some of the major ones, several of which won’t go away or keep coming back…

• Masterplanning in North East Thatcham

This isn’t the first time we’ve written this phrase as a heading to a section (see below, passim) and it won’t be the last.

In brief, this exercise (and the creation of a supplementary planning document) was mandated by the Planning Inspector during his final comments on WBC’s local plan, which was finally adopted in June 2025. The intention was that all the interested parties including WBC, the parishes would collectively thrash out several of the details of this contentious and complex scheme.

A key point is that there are currently four developers or owners involved. As was graphically proved at Sandleford in Newbury (where there were only two), it’s easy for these all be loved up in the early stages when details that might lead to disputes can be glossed over. It’s a different story, though, when the work has started and the four parties begin to disagree about anything from access roads to building-out schedules. It’s these kind of myriad disputes that a masterplanning exercise is designed to address.

It should also provide an opportunity for local communities, mainly as represented by their parish councils, to have some influence over the details of the scheme. All have now reluctantly accepted that the NE Thatcham development will happen in some form. All also have genuine concerns which in their view need to be addressed and widely accepted if the results are going to be as good as they can be (or no worse than they might).

These are all laudable motives. The problem is that about seven months have now elapsed since the local plan was ratified. The Inspector envisaged that the exercise would take twelve. An email from WBC to the parishes and other stakeholders on 21 November described the large amount of work which the project would require. So far, though, it doesn’t seem to have started.

A clue to why not might perhaps be found in the second paragraph of this email. “The partnership of landowners (the North East Thatcham Partnership – NETP) required a short pause to agree internal matters,” this reads, “which meant that community engagement could not commence as originally anticipated. We are now continuing negotiation with the partnership to agree a Planning Performance Agreement (PPA). This will set out key milestones for the SPD’s development and secure the necessary funding arrangements.”

As it doesn’t seem that this PPA has been agreed, this might explain why everything appears to remain paused. The delay could perhaps be explained by the fact that that the four developers/owners can’t agree even these basic points; or that some of them now want to sell their interests and are thus unwilling to engage in a process to which they won’t ultimately be a party. If wither of these are factors, this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the exercise and asks questions about whether the consortium of developers (the NETP) is in a position to take matters forward.

Anyone viewing all this from Whitehall may see little more than a delay. They may choose to blame this on a planning authority which never wanted to have this scheme in the first place but was forced to adopt it. The time may come when the government (looking at 2,500 homes towards its housing targets not getting built) and the developers (looking at the profit from these and the costs already expended as a result of the delays) feel that enough is enough and applications start to get put in; and possibly refused; and almost certainly appealed. If that happens, this would create exactly the the kind of free-for-all that the masterplanning, and the local plan, was designed to prevent.

WBC cannot stop this development from happening. Nor, it seems, can it get all the participants round the table to agree even its basic principles. Even if this is accomplished and the SPD signed, it still needs to be managed and enforced. The problems here might end up making those at Sandleford (where, about fifteen years in, work is yet properly to start) seem like a picnic.

I have some sympathy for the current administration. It never wanted to see this scheme adopted. if a different and more dispersed approach had been taken, as it preferred, several smaller schemes would now be under way with a lot less controversy and some people would have actually moved in. For that, let us not forget, is what it’s all about – building much-needed homes (including social-rent ones) for people to live in. Anyone hoping to acquire a home in NE Thatcham will not feel that this is any more within their grasp than it was when the plan was first proposed four years ago.

• A look back at 2025

We’ve covered a large number in stories in this area over the last twelve months. We’ve picked out some of the major ones below, several of which won’t go away or keep coming back…

• Masterplanning in North East Thatcham and extra homes in Cold Ash. These connected issues have been rumbling on for the whole of last year. When the Planning Inspector considered WBC’s local plan, two of the major changes he made were (a) increasing the number of homes in NE Thatcham from 1,500 back up to 2,500; and (b) mandating that about 700 more dwellings allocated, many of them (in two separate developments) in Cold Ash. While no one in these communities doubts the need for extra homes, it was felt that both had already accepted more than they could easily support. Cold Ash was particularly aggrieved as it had only recently finished its NDP, to which these new demands paid scant regard. After a period of opposition, it was eventually agreed that engaging with the masterplanning process for the area (which the Inspector had mandated) would be the best way to influence the results. This exercise has, however, proceeded a lot more slowly than many had hoped, so re-kindling a sense of local frustration here and also in Bucklebury.

• Parking arrangements and proposed 20mph zones. There have been a number of consultations about these always divisive issues and we’ve provided links to these and highlighted some of the issues and areas of concern.

The closed path. This slightly surreal story surfaced in late 2024 this year and was widely covered elsewhere, with varying degrees of accuracy. In essence, this involved a dangerous path which was closed by the Memorial Hall to avoid further injuries for users but not easily able to be repaired because no one knew who owned it. This all caused a legal, eithical, procedural, and insurance quagmire of uncertainty: which would be a good description of the path in wet weather. This tangled impasse has now largely been resolved.

• The Thatcham North East by-election. This was caused by the resignation of Lee Dillon as one of the ward members for Thatcham North East (some nine months after he was elected as MP for the Newbury constituency). We interviewed all the candidates and provided information about the voting process.

• The Thatcham Festival. This took place in October and we highlighted the range of events on offer.

• Thatcham Town Council’s newsletters. These are produced at the start of each month and provide an excellent summary of what’s going on in the town. We’ve been delighted to link to and summarise these the4se and encourage local residents to sign up to receive them directly.

• Other local stories and events we’ve covered included the problems at Hermitage Parish Council, which resignations had rendered inquorate, an amazingly successful defibrillator appeal in Cold Ash and continuing restitution works on Bucklebury Common.